At the World’s Largest General Science Meeting, Surviving Trump Is the Topic

Welcome back to the Abstract! This week, we have a very special edition of the newsletter packed with everything I saw and heard at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, held in Phoenix from February 12 to 14.  Founded in 1848, AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, with over…

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The U.S. Military Is Reviving Microbes from 40,000-Year-Old Ice

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists with the U.S. military have revived microbes frozen in Alaskan permafrost that dates back nearly 40,000 years—leading to the discovery of 26 new species—as part of an effort to pioneer…

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Palantir, Which Is Powering ICE, Says Immigration Crackdown May Hurt Hiring

In its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Palantir says that increased regulation of immigration may impact the company’s ability to hire the talent it needs. At the same time, Palantir provides the technological infrastructure for the Trump administration’s mass deportation mission. As 404 Media has shown, Palantir considers Immigration and…

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‘Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:’ Inside an AI-Powered Private School

Alpha School, an “AI-powered private school” that heavily relies on AI to teach students and can cost up to $65,000 a year, is AI-generating faulty lesson plans that internal company documentation find sometimes do “more harm than good,” and scraping data from a variety of other online courses without permission to train its own AI,…

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